It’s been a while since I talked about print ads. A long while, but I do have an excuse.

Ready? I didn’t see any.

Well, I saw some, but they were few and far between or hyper-local and not representative of resorts as a whole. So I waited...until last week when the Freeskier resort guide came with not one, not two, but ELEVEN resort print ads. Hallelujah.

When I was a kid, I used to silently worry about weird stuff. Like, somehow, I had mixed up the day of the backpacking trip and I was going to show up at my scout leader’s doorstep a day early loaded to the gills with gear. Or that I had mixed up the time of a birthday party and I’d be three hours early.

This year's Mountain Travel Symposium focused on expanding the winter sports market. And the two-day Forum was full of great takeaways for a brighter future. There is a sea of change coming in our guests: are you prepared to be out in front? Are you communicating with guests and potential guests with the right tools?

The death of Alpine Meadows patroller Bill Foster shook the Lake Tahoe community in a very big way. Foster was a 30-year veteran, a mentor and a friend to everyone he ever worked with in the industry. During routine avalanche control work on December 24, 2012, Foster stood in the “safe-spot” when the charge was thrown. No one expected the resulting avalanche to reach him, but it did. He had probably stood in that exact spot hundreds of times before.